Tesso Nilo National Park, Riau Province, Indonesia. This patch of forest is supposed to provide a habitat for tigers and elephants, but is constantly under threat of fire, illegal logging and encroachment. Image: Flore de Preneuf/PROFOR, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Mongabay Haze Beat

Tuesday 23 August 2016

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The Indonesian parliament will form a task force to look into the cancelling of investigations against 15 companies alleged to be complicit in fires in Riau, the country’s top palm oil producing province.

Legislators made the announcement on Friday as burning in Sumatra and Kalimantan continued to spread, prompting emergency responses from authorities there. The fires are an annual scourge caused by illegal slash-and-burn land clearing practices by companies and farmers, usually to make way for oil palm and timber plantations.

The fires this week were most concentrated in West Kalimantan province, on Indonesia’s part of Borneo island, with 158 hotspots there on Friday, according to Indonesia’s disaster management agency chief Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. That was up from 106 a day earlier. Following a request from the governor, the agency will begin cloud seeding operations next week and send in two water-bombing helicopters in the meantime.

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The effects of the haze have already been seen in Peninsular Malaysia as well as some areas in Sarawak…we don’t want to pick fights with anyone.

Wan Junaidi, environment minister, Malaysia

In the province’s Sanggau district, satellites detected 21 fire alerts on land managed by Asia Pulp & Paper, the country’s largest timber company, according to Global Forest Watch. And in Riau, a number of fire alerts appeared in a concession belonging to Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), Indonesia’s second-biggest timber firm.

The fires in Borneo were characterised by “dense smoke plumes, persisting dry weather and prevailing winds blowing towards ASEAN countries,” the secretariat of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said in a statement.

Malaysian environment minister Wan Junaidi told reporters that he planned to inform his Indonesian counterpart, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, that “the effects of the haze have already been seen in Peninsular Malaysia as well as some areas in Sarawak. It will be to alert [the Indonesians], we don’t want to pick fights with anyone.”

The parliamentary task force for Riau will be formed next month following an outcry over the Riau Police’s closing of cases against 15 companies the Environment and Forestry Ministry had linked to last year’s fires.

“We hope the establishment of this task force can help solve the problem of forest and peatland fires in Riau,” said Suhardiman Amby, a member of the Riau parliament who met with national lawmakers this week.

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